Saturday, January 7, 2012

Former Tekoa Camper Writes Article about Flat Rock in Our State Magazine

I came across a great little article in the July 2011 issue of Our State magazine just recently, written by the director of educational programs and resident scene designer at Flat Rock Playhouse, Dennis Maulden. In the first two paragraphs of his memoir he mentions Camp Tekoa as what inspired him to return to Flat Rock and the mountains.

"I was in junior high school in 1962, the year I spent a week at our Methodist summer retreat, Camp Tekoa. I was a scrawny little kid, afraid of bugs an snakes and the unknowns below the pristine surface of the lake. I didn't know how to row a boat, and I wasn't a great swimmer, but I've always been a survivor at heart and somehow overcame my apprehensions and had a good time."

The article goes on to describe how the Flat Rock Playhouse brought him back to the mountains after he grew up. He also commented on the Playhouse's involvement with Carl Sandburg.

"When I first visited Flat Rock, Carl Sandburg still lived in his house on the mountain, writing and raising goats. During my first year at the Playhouse, he died, and we offered one memorial performance of The World of Carl Sandburg. Now, each week, campers come to the National Historic Site to see the Apprentice Company perform World and Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga Stories, a tradition that recently achieved a kind of boarding-camp cult status."

I would like to think that the "boarding-camp cult status" he mentions in the article is thanks in large part to Camp Tekoa. Though he uses the words "recently achieved," what's recent to Maulden for me goes all the way back to the 1980s (some of you more "seasoned" folks are chuckling at me right now, I know). As a camper myself, I remember taking that van trip from Tekoa to Sandburg's home, listening to Steve Miller Band on every trip because the cassette tape was stuck in the player. The counselors had us all dress up in dew rags, bandannas tied around our head, and had some of us bring bags of popcorn and empty cereal boxes or paper grocery bags. When the story of the Huckabuck family was told, how their popcorn farm went up in flames one night, we threw popcorn up in the air in the audience. When the Playhouse Players did a skit from Sandburg's "Boxes and Bags" poem, we campers would hold up our empty boxes and bags as they went out into the audience looking for them. I looked forward to that every year I came back, even as a Tekoa counselor myself. I heard later from an older counselor that the park rangers asked the Tekoa counselors not to bring the popcorn because it caused such a mess among the benches in the audience! Years later when my wife and I visited Sandburg's home, a veteran park ranger commented on my remark about being a Tekoa camper and counselor. "I always knew when Camp Tekoa was coming. I could see the bandanas on their heads as they walked up the trail from the parking lot!" [This picture is from the Summer of '93, one of the first groups I took to Sandburg's as a counselor.]

To this day, Camp Tekoa still brings its campers to see Rootabaga Stories in the summer. Though the story lineup has changed with the creative tastes of the Playhouse Players, it still brought back fond memories when I took my kids to see them perform.

If you can get a copy of Maulden's article in Our State, it is an interesting read, and it brought back a lot of memories of my summers in Flat Rock.